
Author 



Title 



Imprint. 



18 — 47372-2 a^o 



FRAN KLI N 



A SKETCH 



JOHN BIGELOW. 



Vrlce --T) Cents.] 



F E A N K L I N. 



A SKETCH. 



By JOHN BIGELOW. 



:■ Jo K I S ^ .u]\ 



BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, Sc CO. 

1879. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, hy 

Little, Brown, & Company, 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



FRANKLIN. 



Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), one of the most 
eminent journalists, diplomatists, statesmen, and philo- 
sophers of his time, was born in the city of Boston, and 
in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, on the 17th of 
January 1706. He was the youngest of ten children, and 
the youngest son for five consecutive generations. His 
father, who was born at Ecton, in Northamptonshire, 
England, where the family may be traced back for scmie 
four centuries, married young, and emigrated to America 
with three children in IGSii. From his parents, who never 
kiiew any illness save that of which they died (the father 
at eighty and the mother at eighty-five), he inherited an 
excellent constitution, and a good share of those heroic 
mental and moral qualities by which a good constitution 
is preserved. In his eighth year Benjamin, who never 
could remember when he did not know how to read, was 
placed at school, his parents intending him for the church. 
That purpose, however, was soon abandoned, and in his 
tenth year he was taken from school to assist his father, 
who, though bred a dyer, had taken up, on his arrival in 
New England, the business of tallow-chandler and soap- 
boiler. The lad worked at this, to him, most distasteful 
business, until his twelfth year, when he was apprenticed 
to his elder brother James, then just returned from England 
with a new printing press and fount of type, with which he 
proposed to establish himself in the printing business. In 
1720-21 James Franklin also started a newspaper, the 
second that was publishtd in America, called The Hew 



4 FEANKLIN. 

England Coiirant. Benjamin's tastes inclined him rather 
to intellectual than to any other kind of pleasures, and his 
judgment in the selection of books was excellent. At an early 
age he had made himself familiar with the Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress, with Locke On the Understanding, and with some odd 
volumes of the Spectator, then the literary novelty of the 
day, v/hich he turned to good account in forming the style 
which made him what he still remains, the most uniformly 
readable writer of English who has yet appeared on his 
side of the Atlantic. His success in reproducing articles 
he had read some days previously in the Spectator led him 
to try his hand upon an original article for his brother's 
paper, which he sent to him anonymously. It was accepted, 
and attracted some attention. The experiment was re- 
peated until Benjamin had satisfied himself that his suc- 
cess was not an accident, when he threw off his dis- 
guise. He thought that his brother treated him less 
kindly after this disclosure ; but that did not prevent James 
from publishing his paper in Benjamin's name, when, in 
consequence of some unfortunate paragraphs which appeared 
in its columns, he could only obtain his release from prison, 
to which tbe colonial assembly had condemned him, upon 
condition that he " would no longer print the JVeiv England 
Courant." The relations of the two brothers, however, 
gradually grew so inharmonious that Benjamin determined 
to quit his brother's employment and leave New England. 
He sold some of his books, and v/ith the proceeds, in October 
1723, he found his way to the city of Philadelphia, where, 
400 miles from home, at the immature age of seventeen, 
without an acquaintance, and with only a few pence iu 
his pocket, he was fortunate enough to get emijloyment 
with a Jew printer named Keimer. Keimer was not a man 
of business, and knew very little of his trade, nor had 
he any very competent assistants. Franklin, who was a 
rapid composer, ingenious and full of resources, soon canae 
to be recognized by the public as the master spirit of the 
shop, and to receive flattering attentions from prominent 
citizens who had had opportunities of appreciating his 
cleverness. Among others, Sir William Keith, the governor 
of the province, who may have possessed all the qualifications 



FRANKLIN. 

for his station except every one of the few wliich are quite 
indispensable to a gentleman, took him under his patronage, 
and proposed to start him in business for himself, and to 
give him the means of going to England and purchasing the 
material necessary to equip a new printing office. Franklin, 
rather against the advice of his father, whom he revisited 
in Boston to consult about it, embraced the governor's pro- 
posal, took passage^ for London, which he paid with his 
own money (the governor being more ready with excuses 
than coin), and on reaching London in December 1724, 
where he had been assured he would find a draft to cover 
his expenses, discovered too late that he had been the dupe 
of Keith, and that he must rely upon his own exertions for 
his daily bread. He readily found employment at Palmer's, 
then a famous printer in Bartholomew Close, where, and 
afterwards at Wall's printing house, he continued to be 
employed until the 23d of July 172G, when he again set sail 
for Philadelphia in company with a Mr Dunham, whose 
acquaintance he had made on his voyage out, and who 
tempted him back by the offer of a position as clerk in a 
commercial business which he proposed to establish in 
Philadelphia. While in London Franklin had been engaged 
in setting up the type of a second edition of Wollaston's 
Religion of Nature. The perusal of this work led him to 
write and print a small edition of a pamphlet, wliich he 
entitled A Dissertation on Liherty and Necessity, Pleasure 
and Pain. Had he deferred printing it a few years, it 
would probably never have been heard of, for he lived to 
be rather ashamed of it. It procured him, however, the 
acquaintance of Dr Mandeville, author of the Fable of the 
Bees, whom he described as a most facetious and enter- 
taining companion. Only a few months after Franklin's 
return to Philadelphia, the death of Mr Dunham put an end 
to his career as a merchant. While awaiting something 
more favourable, he was induced by large wages to return 
to his old employer Keimer. This led to his making the 
acquaintance of a young man of the name of Meredith, 
whom he afterwards described as a " Welsh Pennsylvanian, 
thirty years of age, bred to country work, honest, sensible, 
who had a great deal of solid observation, was something of 



6 



FRANKLIN. 



a reader, but given to drink." He was learning the printer's 
art, and offered to furnish the capital to establish a new 
printing office — his father being a man of some means— if 
Franklin would join him and direct the business. This 
proposal was accepted, the types were sent for, a house was 
rented at £20 a year, part of which was sublet to a glazier 
who was to board them, and before the expiration of a year 
from his return to Philadelphia, Franklin, for the first time 
in his life, was in business for himself. " We had scarce 
opened our letters and put our press in order," he says, 
" before George House, an acquaintance of mine, brought a 
countryman to us whom he had met in the street inquiring 
for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety 
of particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this 
countryman's five shillings, being our first-fruits, and coming 
so seasonably, gave us more pleasure than any crown I have 
since earned, and the gratitude I felt towards House has 
made me often more ready than perhaps I should otherwise 
have been to assist young beginners." 

Almost simultaneously, in September 1729, he bought 
for a nominal price the Pennsylvania Gazette, a news- 
paper which Keimer had started nine months before to 
defeat a similar project of Franklin's which accidentally 
came to his knowledge. It had only 90 subscribers. His 
superior arrangement of the paper, his new type, some 
spirited remarks on a controversy then waging between the 
Massachusetts assembly and Governor Burnet (a son of the 
celebrated Bishop Gilbert Burnet) brought his paper into 
immediate notice, and his success, both as a printer and as 
a journalist, was from that time forth assured and complete. 
The influence which he was enabled to exert by his pen 
tlirough his paper, and by his industry and good sense, bore 
abundant fruit during the next seventeen years, during 
which he was at the head of journalism in America. In 
1731 he established the first circulating library on the con- 
tinent ; in 1732 he published the first of the Poor EicharcVs 
Almanacs, a publication which was continued for twenty- 
live years, and attained a marvellous popularity. The 
annual sale was about 10,000 copies, at that time far in ex- 
cess of any other publication in the colonies, and equivalent 



FEANKLIN. 7 

to a sale at the present time of not less than 300,000. In 
the next ten years he acquired a convenient familiarity 
with the French, Italian, Spanish, and. Latin languages. 

In 1736 Franklin was chosen a clerk of the general 
assembly, and was re-elected the following year. He was then 
elected a member of assembly, to which dignity he was re- 
elected for ten successive years, and was appointed one of 
the commissioners to treat with the Indians at Carlisle. In 
1737 Colonel Spotswood, then postmaster-general, appointed 
him deputy postmaster at Philadelphia. About this time 
he organized the first police force and fire company in the 
colonies, and a few years later initiated the movements 
which resulted in the foundation of the university of 
Pennsylvania and of the American Philosophical Society, in 
the organization of a militia force, in the paving of the 
streets, and in the foundation of a hospital ; in fact, he 
furnished the impulse to nearly every measure or project 
which contemplated the welfare and prosperity of the city 
in which he lived. It was during this period, and in the 
midst of these very miscellaneous avocations, that he made 
the discoveries in electricity which have secured him undis- 
puted rank among the most eminent of natural philosophers. 
He was the first to demonstrate that lightning and elec- 
tricity were one. The Fioyal Society, when an account of 
his experiments, which had been transmitted to a scien- 
tific friend in England, was laid before it, made sport of 
them, and refused to print them. Through the recom- 
mendation of his friend they were printed, however, in an 
extra number of the Gentleman' s Magazine, of which the 
publisher ultimately sold five editions. A copy chancing 
to fall into the hands of Buff'on, he saw their value, and 
advised their translation and publication in France, where 
they immediately attracted attention. The " Philadelphia 
experiments," as they were called, were performed in the 
presence of the royal family in Paris, and became the sen- 
sation of the period. The Koyal Society of London founc^ 
it necessary to reconsider its action, published a summary 
of the experiments in its Transactions, and, as Franklin 
afterwards averred, more than made him amends for the 
slight with which it had before treated him, by electing 



8 FRANKLIN. 

him an honorary member, exempting him from the cus- 
tomary payments, and sending him for the rest of his life 
a copy of the Transactions. Since the introduction of 
the art of printing, it would be difficult to name any dis- 
covery which has exerted a more important influence upon 
the industries and habits of mankind. 

In 1754 a war with France was impending, and Franklin, 
who by this time had become the most important man in 
the colony of Pennsylvania, was sent to a congress of com- 
missioners from the different colonies, ordered by the Lords 
of Trade to convene at Albany, to confer with the chiefs of 
the Six Nations for their common defence. Franklin 
there submitted a plan for organizing a system of colonial 
defence which was adopted and reported; it provided for a 
president-general of all the colonies to be appointed by the 
crown, and a grand council to be chosen by the representa- 
tives of the people of the several colonies. The colonies so 
united, he thought, would be sufficiently strong to defend 
themselves, and there would then be no need of troops from 
England. Had this course been pursued, the subsequent 
pretence for taxing America would not have been furnished, 
and the bloody contest it occasioned might have been 
avoided. The Lords of Trade, however, feared that any 
such union of the colonies would reveal to them their 
strength ; and the project of union, though accompanied 
with a recommendation from the governor of the province 
of Pennsylvania, when it was brought into the assembly, 
as it was during Franklin's casual absence from tbe hall, 
was rejected. This Franklin thought a mistake. "But 
such mistakes," he said, "are not new; history is full of 
the errors of states and princes. Those who govern, hav- 
ing much business on their hands, do not generally like 
to take the trouble of considering and carrying into exe- 
cution new projects. The best public measures are there- 
fore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced 
by the occasion." Instead of allowing the colonists to 
unite and defend themselves, the home Government sent 
over General Braddock with two regiments of regular 
English troops, whom the colonists were expected to 
maintain. The proprietaries, Thomas and Kichard Penn, 



FRANKLIN. y 

, r 

sons of William Penn, and the hereditary governors of the 
colonies, however, " with incredible meanness," instructed 
their deputies — the governors they sent out — to pass no act 
for ]ev3'ing the necessary taxes unless their vast estates were 
in the same act exempt. They even took bonds of their 
deputies to observe these instructions. The assembly 
finally, " finding the proprietaries obstinately persisted in 
manacling their deputies with instructions inconsistent not 
only with the privileges of the people but with the service 
of the crown," — -we are quoting the language of Franklin, — ^ 

" resolved to petition the king against them," and appointed 
Franklin as their agent to go to England and present their 
petition. He arrived in London on the 27th July 1757, 
not this time as a poor printer's bo5'', but as a messenger 
to the most powerful sovereign in the world from a cor- 
porate body of some of his most loyal subjects. 

Franklin lost no time, after reaching London, in waiting 
upon Lord Grenville, then president of the council, and held 
with him a conversation which he deemed of so much im- 
portance that he made a record of it immediately upon 
returning to his lodgings. Nor did he exaggerate its im- 
portance, for in it were the germs of the revolt and independ- 
ence of the North American colonies. " You Americans," 
said Grenville, " have wrong ideas of the nature of your 
constitution ; you contend that the king's instructions to his 
governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to 
regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But 
those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given 
to a minister going abroad for regulating his conduct in 
some trilling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up 
by judges learned in the law ; they are then considered, 
debated, and perhaps amended in council, after which they 
are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they 
relate to you, the laio of the land, for the king is the legis- 
lature of the colonies." Franklin frankly told his lordship 
that this was new doctrine, — that he understood from the 
colonial charters that the laws of the colonies were to be 
made by their assemblies, approved by the king, and when 
once approved the king alone could neither alter nor amend 
them. Franklin admits that he was alarmed by this con- 



10 FRANKLIN. 

versation, but he was not as much alarmed as he had reason 
to be, for it distinctly raised the issue between the king and 
a fraction of his people which was to require a seven years' 
war to decide. Franklin next sought an interview with 
the brothers Penn to lay before them the grievances of 
the assembly. Finding them entirely inaccessible to his 
reasonings, he supplied the material for an historical review 
of the controversy between the assembly and the proprie- 
taries, which made an octavo volume of 500 pages. The 
success of Franklin's mission thus far was not encourag- 
ing, for he appealed to a class largely intei-ested in the 
abuses of which he complained. Meantime, Governor 
Denny, who had been recently sent out to the province 
by the proprietaries, tired of struggling with the public 
opinion which was surging about him in Pennyslvania, 
and in disregard of his instructions, assented to the passing 
of laws which taxed equally the entire landed property of 
the province, and assumed that the assembly was the 
proper judge of the requirements of the people it repre- 
sented. An equivalent in paper money was issued upon 
the faith of this tax. The propiietaries were very angry 
with the governor, recalled him, and threatened to prosecute 
him for a breach of his instructions. But they never 
carried their threat into execution. 

The subject of "taxing all estates," after a careful dis- 
cussion by counsel on both sides in London, was finally 
referred to a committee of the privy council for plantations, 
who reported adversely to the petitioners whom Franklin 
represented. Disappointed, but not discouraged, he sug- 
gested a compromise involving a personal engagement on 
his part that, among other things, the assembly should pass 
an act exempting from taxation the ^msurveyed waste lands 
of the Penns' estate, and secure the assessment of the sur- 
veyed waste lands at the usual rate at which other property 
of that description was assessed. Upon this proposal, to the 
infinite disgust of the Penns, a favourable report was made, 
and approved by the king, George II., then within a few 
weeks of his death. " Thus," wrote Franklin, a few days 
later-, to Lord Kames, " the cause is at length ended, and 
in a'great degree to our satisfaction," Franklin's stipulation 



FRANKLIN. 11 

gave to the Peuns nothing, in fact, whicli they had not 
always had, and therefore the assembly never passed the 
superfluous act for securing it. They did, however, relieve 
Pennsylvania from the financial embarrassments that must 
have followed the repeal of a money bill which had already 
been a year in operation, and it established the principle 
till then denied by the proprietaries, that their estates 
were subject to taxation. The success of his first foreign 
mission, therefore, was substantial and satisfactory. 

During this sojourn of five years in England, Franklin 
made many valuable friends outside court and political 
circles, among whom the names of Hume, Robertson, and 
Adam Smith are conspicuous. In the spring of 1759 he,, 
received the degree of doctor of laws from the Scottish 
university of St Andrews. He also made active use of his 
marvellous and unsurpassed talent for pamphleteering. He 
wrote for the Annual Eegistey-, of which young Edmund 
Burke was then editor, and with whom, at a later day, he 
was destined to have closer relations, a paper " On the 
Peopling of Countries," traces of which may readily be 
discerned in the first book of The Wealth of Kations. In 
this paper Franklin combated the popular delusion that the 
people and wealth of the colonies were necessarily so much 
population and wealth abstracted from the mother country, 
and he estimated that the population of the colonies, by 
doubling once in every twenty-five years, would, at the 
end of a century, give a larger English population beyond 
the Atlantic than in England, without at all interfering 
with the growth of England in either direction. Franklin's 
conjecture, that the population of the colonies would double 
every twenty-five years, commended itself to the judgment 
of Adam Smith, who adopted it ; and it has thus far been 
vindicated by the census. 

On the 25th of October 17G0 King George II. died, 
and his grandson ascended the throne. A clamour for 
peace followed. Franklin was for a vigorous prosecution 
of the war then pending with France, and wrote what 
purported to be a chapter from an old book, which he said 
was written by a Spanish Jesuit to an ancient king of 
Spain, entitled. On the Means of disposing the Enemy to 



12 FRANKLIN. 

Peace. It was ingenious and had a great effect, and, like 
everything Franklin wrote, is about as readable to-day as 
when first printed. Soon after the capture of Quebec, 
Franklin wrote a more elaborate paper, entitled, Tim 
Interests of Great Britain considered with regard to her 
('olonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadelotqic. 
Its purpose was to show that, while Canada remained French, 
the English colonies of North America could never be safe 
nor peace in Europe permanent. Tradition reports that 
tliis pamphlet had great weight in determining the ministry 
to retain Canada, which, thanks in a large degree to his 
foresight and activity, is to-day one of the brightest jewels 
in the English crown. " I have long been of opinion," he 
wrote about this time to Lord Kames, " that the foundations 
of the future grandeur and stability of the British empire 
lie in America ; and though, like other foundations, they 
are low and little now, they are nevertheless broad and 
strong enough to support the greatest political structure 
that human wisdom ever erected. I am, therefore, by no 
means for restoring Canada. If we keep it, all the country 
from the St Lawrence to the Mississippi will in another 
century be filled with British. Britain will become vastly 
iuore populous by the immense increase of its commerce. 
The Atlantic sea will be covered with your trading ships ; 
and your naval power, thence continually increasing, will 
extend your influence round the whole globe and awe the 
world." What Englishman can read these papers to-day 
without a feeling of regret that Franklin was not permitted 
to occupy a seat in parliament as one of the representatives 
of the British colonies, so that England and the world 
might have had the advantage in a larger measure of his 
rare wisdom, sagacity, and patriotism % 

Franklin sailed again for America in August 1762, after 
an absence of five years, during which he had found an 
opportunity of visiting large portions of the Continent, and 
of acquiring information about Europetin aff"airs both in and 
out of England, which made him more than ever an en- 
lightened and trustworthy authority in America upon all 
foreign questions afl'ecting the interests of the colonists. 
The peace with the proprietary government was only 



FEANKLiy. 13 

temporary. The question of taxing their estates had come 
up in a new form, and finally resulted in a petition from the 
assembly drawn by Franklin himself for a change of govern- 
ment for Pennsylvania. The election which took place in 
the fall of 1764 turned upon the issue raised in this petition, 
and the proprietary party succeeded, by a majority of 28 
votes out of 4000, in depriv^ing Franklin of the seat to 
which he had been chosen for fourteen successive years in 
the provincial assembly. The victory, however, was a barren 
one, for no sooner did the assembly convene than it resolved 
again to send Franklin as its special agent to England to 
take charge of their petition for a change of government, 
and to look after the interests of the province abroad. On 
the 7th of November following his defeat, he was again on 
his way across the Atlantic. We may as well here say at 
once that the petition which he brought with him for a 
change of government came to nothing. Franklin presented 
it, and the Penns opposed it ; but matters of so much 
graver consequence continually arose between 1765, when 
it was presented, and 1775, when the revolution began, 
that it was left to the iinal disposition of time. The Penns 
at last had the sagacity to sell betimes what they were not 
wise enough to keep. The State of Pennsylvania gave them 
£130,000 for their interest in its soil, and the British 
Government settled upon the head of the family a pension 
of £4000 a year. 

Early in the year of 1764 Granville, the prime minister, 
had sent for the agents of the American colonies resident in 
London, and told them that the war with France which 
had just terminated had left upon England a debt of 
£73,000,000 sterling, and that he proposed to lay a portion 
of this burthen upon the shoulders of the colonists by 
means of a stamp duty, unless the colonists could propose 
some other tax equally productive and less inconvenient. 
He directed the agents to write to their several assemblies 
for instructions upon this point. The assembly of 
Pennsylvania, which expressed the sentiment of all the 
colonies, was decidedly of the opinion that to tax the 
colonies, which were already taxed beyond their strength, 
and which were surrounded by aboriginal enemies and ex- 



14 FRANKLIN. 

posed to constant expenditures for defence, was cruel, but 
to tax them by a parliament in which they were not repre- 
sented was an indignity. While such was their feeling, 
they allowed it to be understood that they would not reject 
any requisition of their king for aid, and if he would only 
signify his needs in the usual way, the assembly would do 
their utmost for him. These views were summed up in a 
" resolution " thus expressed : " that, as the assembly 
always had, so they always should think it their duty to 
grant aid to the crown, according to their abilities, whenever 
required of them in the usual manner." To prevent the 
introduction of such a bill as the ministry proposed, and 
which Franklin characterized as " the mother of mischief," 
he left no stone unturned, by personal intercession, by 
private correspondence, and through the press. At last, in 
despair, he, with his associate agents, sought an interview 
with the minister. They found him inexorable. The 
Government wanted the money, and it did not wish to 
recognize the principle upon which the colonists resisted the 
Government method of obtaining it. The bill was intro- 
duced, and was promptly passed, only 50 voting against it 
in the Commons, and the Lords not dividing upon it. The 
sum expected from this tax being only £100,000, it v/as 
thought the colonists would soon be reconciled to it. This 
was evidently Franklin's hope, which he did his utmost to 
realize. Writing home to a friend shortly after the passage 
of the Act he said, " The tide was too strong for us. We 
might as well have hindered the sun's setting ; but since it 
is down, my friend, and it may be long before it rises again, 
let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still 
light candles. Frugality and industry will go a great v/ay 
towards indemnifying us. Idleness and pride tax with a 
lieavier hand than kings and parliament." But when the 
news of the passage of the Stamp Act reached the colonies, 
and its provisions came to be scanned, ^ the indiscretion of 
those who advised it was manifest. Meetings were held in 



^ One clause of the Act provided that the Americans shall have no 
commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither 
purchase, nor grant, nor recover debts ; they shall neither marry nor 



FEANKLIN. 15 

all the colonies, where resolves were passed unanimously to 
consume no more British manufactures until the hateful Act 
was repealed. For simply recommending a trusty person 
to collect the tax, Franklin himself was denounced, and bis 
family in Philadelphia was in danger of being mobbed. 
The Act not only failed of its purpose in producing a 
revenue, but before it went into operation a formidable 
agitation for its repeal had already commenced. 

The succeeding session of pai'liament, which began in 
December 1765, is specially memorable for Franklin's ex- 
amination before a committee of the House on the effects 
of the Stamp Act ; for the magnificent parliamentary debut 
of Edmund Burke, whose speeches for the repeal, said 
Dr Johnson, "filled the town with wonder;" and for the 
repeal of the offensive Act by a majority of 108. The 
first six weeks of this session were devoted to taking 
testimony at the bar of the house on American afi'airs, and 
especially upon the probable advantages and disadvantages 
of the Stamp Act. Franklin was the only one of the 
witnesses who lifted a voice that could be heard by pos- 
terity. Burke said the scene reminded him of a master 
examined by a parcel of schoolboys. George Whitfield, 
the great field preacher, wrote — " Our trusty friend, Dr 
Franklin, has gained immortal honour by his behaviour at 
the bar of the House. The answer was always found equal 
to the questioner. He stood unappalled, gave pleasure to 
his friends, and did honour to his country," The examina- 
tion was first published in 17G7, without the name of 
printer or of publisher, and the following remarks upon it 
appeared in the Gentleman\s Magazine for July of that year : 
" From this examination of Dr Franklin the reader may 
form a clearer and more comprehensive idea of the state and 
disposition of America, of the expediency or inexpediency 
of the measure in question, and of the character and con- 
duct of the minister who proposed it, than from all that 
has been written upon the subject in newspapers and 

make their wills unless they pay such and such sums in specie for the 
stamps which are to give validity to the ^proceedings. Franklin 
testified under oath before a committee of parliament tliat such a tax 
would drain the Government of all their specie in a single year. 



16 FRANKLIN. 

pamphlets, under the titles of essays, letters, speeches, and 
considerations, from the first moment of its becoming the 
object of public attention till now. The questions in 
general were put with great subtlety and judgment, and 
they are answered with such deep and familiar knowledge 
of the subject, such precision and perspicuity, such temper 
and yet such spirit, as do the greatest honour to Dr 
Franklin, and justify the general opinion of his character 
and abilities." 

The light thrown upon colonial affairs by Franklin's ex- 
amination, more pi'obably than all other causes combined, 
determined parliament to repeal the bill almost as soon as 
it was to have gone into operation, and immediately upon 
the conclusion of Franklin's examination. It was to 
Franklin a never-to-be-forgutten triumph. He celebrated it 
characteristically. " As the Stamp Act," he wrote to his 
wife, " is at length repealed, I am willing you should have 
a new gown, which you may suppose I did not send sooner 
as I knew you would not like to be finer than your neigh- 
bours unless in a gown of your own spinning. Had the 
trade between the two countries totally ceased, it was a 
comfort to me to recollect that T had once been clothed, 
from head to foot, in woollen and linen of my wife's manu- 
facture, that I never was prouder of my dress in my life, 
and that she and her daughter might do it again if it was 
necessary. I told the parliament that it was my opinion, 
before the old clothes of the Americans were worn out, they 
might have new ones of their own making, I have sent 
you a fine piece of Pompadour satin, 14 yards, cost Us. a 
yard ; a silk n6glig6e and petticoat of brocaded lute string, 
for my dear Sally [his daughter] ; with two dozen gloves, 
four bottles of lavender water, and two little reels." 

The news of the repeal filled the colonists with delight, 
and restored Franklin to their confidence and affection. 
From that time until the end of his days he was, on the 
whole, the most popular man in America. Unhappily the 
repeal of the Stamp Act was a concession to the commercial 
interests of the mother country not to the political dogmas 
of the colonists. The king's party was more irritated than 
instructed by its defeat, and instead of surrendering any of 



FRANKLIN. 17 

its pretensions to tax the colonies, almost immediately 
brought in a bill, which was passed, asserting the absolute 
supremacy of parliament over the colonies, and in the suc- 
ceeding parliament another bill, which also passed, imposing 
duties on the paper, paints, glass, and tea imported by the 
colonies. This tax was resented by the colonies with no 
less bitterness and determination than they had resented the 
Stamp Act. It conveyed sterility into their recent triumph, 
and aroused a feeling akin to disloyalty. It made the 
minor differences among the colonists disappear, and 
crystallized public opinion with marvellous rapidity around 
the principle of " no taxation without representation," — a 
principle which it was impossible to make acceptable to the 
king, whose old-fashioned notions of the royal prerogative 
had only been confirmed and strengthened by the irritating 
pertinacity of the colonists. Thus the issue was gradually 
made, up between the mother country and its American 
dependencies. Each party felt that its first duty was to be 
firm, and that any concession would be disastrous as well 
as dishonourable. Such a state of feeling could terminate 
but in one way. It is now clear to all, as it was then clear 
to a few, that the passing of the tea and paper bill, made 
the difference between the crown and the colonists irrecon- 
cilable, and that nothing but the death of the king could 
prevent a war. The nine succeeding years were spent by 
the contending parties in struggling for position, — the 
colonies becoming more indifl'erent to the mother country, 
and the mother country less disposed to put up with the 
pretensions of her offspring. Franklin, when he went to 
London in 1764, confidently expected to return in the follow- 
ing year ; but he was not destined to leave England till ten 
years later, and then with the depressing suspicion that 
the resources of diplomacy were exhausted. Meantime he 
remitted no effort to find some middle ground of conciliation. 
Equipped with the additional authority derived from com- 
missions to act as the agent of the provinces of Massa- 
chusetts, of New Jersey, and of Georgia, and with a social 
influence never possessed probably by any other American 
representative at the English court, he would doubtless have 
prevented the final alienation of the colonies, if such a result, 



18 FRANKLIN. 

under the circumstances, had been possible. But it was 
not. The colonists were Englishmen for the most part, and 
they could not be brought to make concessions which would 
have dishonoured them ; and Franklin was not the man to 
ask of them such concessions. He took the position that 
" the parliament had no right to make any law whatever 
binding the colonies; that the king, and not the king, Lords, 
and Commons collectively, was their sovereign ; and that the 
king, with their respective parliaments, is their only legis- 
lator." In other words, he asked only what England has 
since granted to all her colonies, and what, but for the 
fatuous obstinacy of the king, who at this time was rather 
an object of commiseration than of criticism, she would 
undoubtedly have yielded. But under the pressure of the 
crown, negotiation and debate seemed rather to aggravate 
the differences than to remove them. The solemn peti- 
tions of the colonists to the throne were treated with 
neglect or derision, and their agents with contumely, and 
Franklin was openly insulted in the House of Lords, was 
deprived of his office of deputy-postmaster, and was scarcely 
safe from personal outrage. Satisfied that his usefulness in 
England was at an end, he placed his agencies in the hands 
of Arthur Lee, an American lawyer practising at the 
London bar, and on the 21st of March 1775, again set sail 
for Philadelphia. On reaching home his last hope of 
maintaining the integrity of the empire was dissipated 
by the news which awaited him of collisions which had 
occurred, some two weeks previous, between the people 
and the royal troops at Concord and at Lexington. He 
found the colonies in flagrant rebellion, and himself sud- 
denly transformed from a peacemaker into a warmaker. 

The two years which followed were among the busiest of 
his life. The very morning of his arrival he was elected, 
by the assembly of Pennsylvania, a delegate to that conti- 
nental congress then sitting in Philadelphia which consoli- 
dated the armies of the colonies, placed George Washington 
in command of them, issued the first continental currency, 
and assumed the responsibility of resisting the imperial 
government. In this congress he served on not less than 
ten committees. One of its first measures was to organize 



FRANKLIN. 19 

a continental postal system and to make Franklin post- 
master-general. Thus he was avenged for his dismissal 
18 months before from the office of deputy by being 
appointed to a place of higher rank and augmented 
authority. He planned an appeal for aid from the king of 
the French, and wrote the instructions of Silas Deane, a 
member of the congress, who was to convey it ; he was 
sent as one of three commissioners to Canada, in one of the 
most inclement months of the year, on what proved an in- 
effectual mission to persuade the Canadians to join the new 
colonial union ; he was elected a delegate from Phil- 
adelphia to the conference which met on the 18th of June 
1776, and which, in the name of the people of the colonies, 
formally renounced all allegiance to King George, and called 
for an election of delegates to a convention to form a con- 
stitutional government for the United Colonies. He was 
also one of the committee of five which drew up what is 
known as the " Declaration of Independence." When about 
to sign it, Hancock, one of his colleagues, is reported to have 
said, " We must be unanimous ; there must be no pulling 
different ways ; we must all hang together." " Yes," replied 
Franklin, " we must hang together, or we will be pretty sure 
to hang separately." He was also chosen president of the 
convention called to frame a constitution for the State of 
Pennsylvania, which commenced its session on the IGth of 
July 1776. He was selected by congress to discuss terms 
of peace with Admiral Lord Howe, wlio had arrived in 
New York harbour on the 12th of July 1776, to take com- 
mand of the British naval forces in American waters, and 
on the 26th of September, upon the receipt of encouraging 
news from France, he was chosen unanimously to be one 
of three to repair to the court of Louis XVL and solicit his 
support. His colleagues were John Adams, destined to be 
Washington's successor in the presidency, and Arthur Lee, 
Franklin's successor in the agency in London. 

Franklin, now in the seventieth year of his age, proceeded 
to collect all the money he could command, amounting to 
between £3000 or £4000, lent it to congress, and with 
two grandsons set sail in the sloop of war "Reprisal" on the i 
27th day of October, arriving at Nantes on the 7th of 



20 FRANKLIN. 

December, and at Paris towards the end of the same month. 
With his usual tact and forcaste he found quarters in a 
house in Passy (then a suburb but now a part of the city 
of Paris) belonging to an active friend of the cause he 
repi-esented — Le Ray de Chaumont — who held influential 
relations with the court, and through whom he was enabled 
to be in the fullest commvmication with the French Govern- 
ment without compromising it. 

At the time of Franklin's arrival in Paris, he was already 
one of the most talked about men in the world. He was 
a member of every important learned society in Europe ; 
he was a member, and one of the managers of the Royal 
Society, and one of eight foreign members of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences in Paris. Three editions of his 
scientific works had already appeared in Paris, and a new 
edition, much enlarged, had recently appeared in London. 
To all these advantages he added a political purpose — the 
dismemberment of the British empire — which was entirely 
congenial to every citizen of France. " Franklin's reputa- 
tion," wrote Mr Adams, who, unhappily, was never able to 
regard his colleague's fame with entire equanimity, " was 
more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick 
or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed 
than all of them. ... If a collection could be made of 
all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the 18th 
century a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon 
le grand FranUin would appear, it is believed, than upon 
any other roan that ever lived." 

" Franklin's appearance in the French salons, even 
before he began to negotiate, " says the German historian 
Schlosser, " was an event of great importance to the whole 
of Europe. . . . His dress, the simplicity of his external 
appearance, the friendly meekness of the old man, and the 
apparent humility of the Quaker, procured for Freedom a 
mass of votaries among the court circles who used to be 
alarmed at its coarseness and unsophisticated truths." 
We may here add that such was the number of portraits, 
busts, and medallions of him in circulation before he left 
Paris that he would have been recognized from them by 
nearly every adult citizen in any part of the civilized world. 



FRANKLIN. 



21 



Writing to his daughter in the third year of his residence in 
Paris, of a medallion to which she had alluded, he says — 
" A variety of others have been made since, of different 
sizes ; some to be set in the lids of snuff-boxes and some 
so small as to be worn in rings, and the numbers sold are 
incredible. These, with the pictures, busts, and prints (of 
which copies are spread everywhere) have made your 
father's face as well known as the moon, so that he durst 
not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as 
his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture 
to show it." 

The story of Franklin's mission to France, as recorded 
in his own correspondence, is singularly interesting and 
romantic. In these respects it is difficult to find its pai-allel 
in the literature of diplomacy. Its results may be summed 
up in a few words. He became at once, as already stated, an 
object of greater popular interest than any other man in 
France, — an interest which, during his eight years' sojourn 
there, seemed always on the increase. Streets in numerous 
cities, and several societies, were named after him ; the 
French Academy paid him its highest honours, and he 
conferred more distinction upon any salon he frequented 
than it could reciprocate. He animated French society 
with a boundless enthusiasm for the cause of the rebel 
colonists, persuaded the Government that the interests of 
France required her to aid them, obtained a treaty of 
alliance at a crisis in their fortunes in the winter of 1777, 
when such an alliance was decisive, and the great moral 
advantage of a royal frigate to convey the news of it 
to America. A few months later he signed the treaties 
which bound the two countries to mutual friendship and 
defence, and on the morning of the "20th March 1778 the 
three envoys were formally received by the king at Ver- 
sailles, and through them the country they represented 
was first introduced into the family of independent nations. 

In February of the following year General Lafayette, who 
had distinguished himself as a volunteer in the rebel army, 
returning to France on leave, brought a commission from 
the American congress to Dr Franklin as sole plenipoten- 
tiary of the United States to the court of France. From 



22 FRANKLIN 

this time until the close of the war it was Franklin's para- 
mount duty to encourage the French Government to supply 
the colonists with money. How successfully he discharged 
this duty may be inferred from the following statement of 
the advances made by France upon his solicitation : — In 
1777, 2,000,000 francs; in 1778, 3,000,000 francs; in 
1779, 1,000,000 francs; in 1780, 4,000,000 francs; in 
1781, 10,000,000 francs; in 1782, 6,000,000 francs; in 
all, 26,000,000 francs. To obtain these aids at a time 
when France was not only at war, but practically bankrupt, 
and in defiance of the strenuous resistance of Necker, the 
minister of finance, was an achievement, the credit of which, 
there is the best reason for believing, was mainly due to 
the matchless diplomacy of Franklin. Writing to the 
French minister in Philadelphia, December 4, 1780, the 
Count de Vergennes said — 

" As to Dr Franklin, his conduct leaves congress nothing to desire. 
It is as zealous and patriotic as it is wise and circumspect, and yoix 
may affirm with assurance, on all occasions where you think proper, 
that the method he pursues is much more efBcacious than it would 
be if he were to assume a tone of importunity in multiplying his 
demands, and above all in supporting them by menaces (an allusion 
to the indiscreet conduct of Franklin's colleagues), to which we 
should give neither credence nor value, and which would only tend 
to render him pei'sonally disagreeable." 

Again, February 15, 1781, Vergennes wrote: — 
"If you are questioned respecting an opinion of Dr Franklin, 
you may without hesitation say that we esteem him as much on 
account of the patriotism as the wisdom of his conduct ; and it has 
been owing in a great part to this cause, and the confidence we put 
in the veracity of Dr Franklin, that we have determined to relieve 
the pecuniary embarrassments in which he has been placed by con- 
gi'ess. It may be judged from this fact, which is of a personal 
natui'e, if that minister's conduct has been injurious to the interests 
of his country, or if any other would have had the same advan- 
tages. " 

Franklin had been for some years a martyr to the gout, 
which, with other infirmities incident to his advanced age 
of seventy -five, determined him to ask congress, in 1781, 
to relieve him, in a letter so full of dignity and feeling, that 
no one can read it even now, after the lapse of nearly a 
century, without emotion. 



FRAXKLIN. 23 

" I must now," he wrote, after disposing of official topics, " beg 
leave to say something relating to myself — a subject with which I 
have not often ti-oubled congi-ess. I have passed my seventy-fifth 
year, and I find that the long and severe fit of the gout which I 
had the last winter had shaken me exceedingly, and I am yet far 
from having recovered the bodily strength I before enjoyed. I do 
not know that my mental faculties are impaired, — perhaps I shall 
be the last to discover that, — but I am sensible of great diminution 
of my activity, a quality I think particularly necessary in your 
minister at this court. I am afraid, therefore, that your affairs may 
some time or other suffer by my deficienc}^ I find also that the 
business is too heavy for me and too confining. sThe constant 
attendance at home, which is necessary for receiving and accepting 
your bills of exchange (a matter foreign to my ministei'ial functions), 
to answer letters, and perfoi-m other parts of my employment, pre- 
vents ray taking the air and exercise which my annual journeys 
formerly used to afford me, and which contributed much to the 
preservation of my health. There are many other little personal 
attentions which the infirmities of age render necessary to an old 
man's comfort, even in some degree to the continuance of his exist- 
ence, and with which business often interferes. 

" I have been engaged in public aft'au'S, and enjoyed public confi- 
dence in some sha})e or other during the long term of fifty years, and 
honour sufficient to satisfy any reasonable ambition ; and I have no 
other left but that of repose, which I hope the congress will grant 
me by sending some person to supply my place. At the same time 
I beg they may be assured that it is not any the least doubt of 
their success in the glorious cause, nor any disgust received in their 
service, that induces me to decline it, but purely and simply the 
reasons I have mentioned. And as I cannot at present undergo th^ 
fatigues of a sea voyage (the last having been almost too much for 
me), and would not again expose myself to the hazard of capture and 
imprisonment in this time of war, I propose to remain here at least 
till the peace — perhaps it may be for the remainder of my life — and 
if any knowledge or experience I have acquired here may be thought 
of use to my successor, I shall freely communicate it and assist him 
with any influence I may be supposed to have, or counsel that may 
be desii'ed of me." 

Congress not only declined to receive his resignation, but 
with its refusal sent him a commission, jointly with John 
Adams and John Jay, who had been the agent of the con- 
gress in Spain, to negotiate a peace. Cornwallis had sur- 
rendered at Yorktown on the 17th of October of that year, 
the anniversary of Burgoyne's disastrous surrender at 
Saratoga just four years before, and a farther prosecution 
of tlie war beyond what might be necessary to secure the 
most favourable terms of peace was no longer advocated by 



24 FRANKLIN. 

any party in England, Active negotiations with Franklin 
and his associates were opened, and on the 30th of 
November a preliminary treaty was signed by the English 
and American commissioners ; a definitive treaty was signed 
on the 30th of September 1783, and ratified by congress 
January 14, 1784, and by the English Government on the 
9th of April following. At the conclusion of the pre- 
liminary treaty Franklin renewed his application to congress 
to be relieved, to which he received no answer. A few 
weeks after signing the definitive treaty, he renewed it 
again, but it was not until the 7th of March 1785 that 
congress adopted the resolution which permitted " The 
Honourable Benjamin Franklin to return to America as 
soon as convenient," and three days later it appointed 
Thomas Jefferson to succeed him. 

Daring his stay in Paris Franklin gave by no means all 
his time to political problems. He wrote a paper for the 
Eoyal Society on the subject of balloons, a topic which, 
under the auspices of the Montgolfiers, attracted a great 
deal of attention at that time in France, Sir Joseph Banks 
commended it for its completeness. To some one who 
asked the use of the new invention Franklin replied by 
asking, " What is the use of a new-born baby ?" In 1784 
he was appointed by the French Academy one of a commis- 
sion ordered by the king to investigate the phenomena of 
"mesmerism"; and to a large extent he directed the 
investigation which resulted in the disgrace and flight of 
Mesmer and his final disappearance from the public eye. 
Franklin's Information to those xvlio would Remove to 
America, his New Treatise on Privateering, his Essay on 
Raising the Wages in Europe by the American Revohition, 
his Letter to Vaughan on Lux^iry, his Story of the Whistle, 
together with his private as well as official correspondence, 
kept the world constantly talking about him and w^ondering 
at the inexhaustible variety and unconventional novelty of 
his resources. "You replace Dr Franklin," I hear, said 
the Count de Vergennes to Jefferson when they first met. 
" I succeed, no one can replace him," was Jefferson's reply. 

It was on the 12th of July 1785 that, accompanied by 
some members of his family and most intimate friends, he 



FRANKLIN. 25 

set out for Havre on his return to America. In view of his 
infirmities, the queen had placed one of her litters at his 
disposal ; the next day he was constrained by a most 
pressing invitation to accept the hospitality of Cardinal de 
la Rochefoucauld at Gaillon. At Rouen, he was waited upon 
by a deputation of the Academy of that city. At Ports- 
mouth, where the party joined the vessel that was to take 
them home, the bishop of St Asaph's, "the good bishop," 
as Franklin used to style him, an old friend and correspond- 
ent, came down with his family to see him, and remained 
with him for the two or three days before they sailed. 

On the 13th of September Franklin, who had become 
by far the most widely known and the most eminent 
of Americans, disembarked again at the very wharf in 
Philadelphia on which, sixty-two years before, he had 
landed a houseless, homeless, friendless, and substantially 
penniless runaway apprentice of seventeen. The day suc- 
ceeding his arrival, the assembly of Pennsylvania voted 
him a congratulatory address ; the public bodies very 
generally waited upon him, and General Washington, by 
letter, asked to join in the public gratulations upon his safe 
return to America, and upon the many eminent services he 
had rendered. Sensible as his countrymen were of the mag- 
nitude of their obligations to him, and of his increasing 
infirmities, it never seems to have occurred to them that 
they could dispense with his services. In the month suc- 
ceeding his arrival he was chosen a member of the munici- 
pal council of Philadelphia, of which he was also unani- 
mously elected chairman. He was soon after elected by 
the executive council and assembly president of Pennsyl- 
vania, by seventy-six out of the seventy-seven votes cast. 
" I have not firmness enough," he wrote to an old friend, 
'•' to resist the unanimous desire of my country folks, and 
I find myself harnessed again to their service another 
year. They engrossed the prime of my life. They have; 
eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." 

At the expiration of his term in 178G, he was unani- 
mously re-elected, and again unanimously in 1787. He was 
also chosen a member of the national convention, of which 
Washington was a member and president, which met on 



26 FKANKLIN. 

the second Monday of May 1787, to frame a constitution 
for the new confederacy. To the joint influence of Franklin 
and Washington probably should be ascribed the final 
adoption of the constitution which this convention framed, 
and which continues to be the fundamental law of the 
United States. The most original, if not the most ingeni- 
ous, and perhaps, in view of the grave difficulties it disposed 
of, the most important feature of the constitution they con- 
structed — that which gave the States equal representation 
in the upper house or senate and in the lower house repre- 
sentation according to population — was the device of Frank- 
lin. For his three years' service as president of Pennsyl- 
vania Franklin refused to accept any compensation beyond 
a reimbursement of the postage he had paid on official 
letters, amounting to some =£77, 5s. 6d., it being one of his 
notions, which he advocated in the convention, that 
the chief magistrates of a nation should serve without 
pecuniary compensation. Franklin survived his retirement 
from office two years, which he consecrated almost as esclu- 
sively to the public use as any other two of his life, 
although most of the time the victim of excruciating pain. 
His pen was never more actively nor more elFectively 
employed. He helped to organize and was president of 
the first society formed on the American continent or 
anywhere else, we believe, for the abolition of slavery, and 
as its president wrote and signed the first remonstrance 
against slavery addressed to the A.merican congress. 
( Franklin died in his own house, in Philadelphia, on the 
17th of April 1790, and in the eighty-fifth year of his age. 
Since then, as in life, his fame has gone on increasing. No 
American has ever received such varied and extensive 
homage from his countrymen. There is no State in the 
United States, and there are few counties that have not a 
town called Franklin (Ohio has nineteen of them) ; scarce 
a town that does not boast of its Franklin Street, or its 
Franklin Square, or its Franklin hotel, or its Franklin 
bank, or its Franklin insurance company, and so on ; his 
bust or portrait is everywhere ; and some sort of a monu- 
ment of Franklin is among the attractions of almost every 
large city, j 



FRANKLIN. 27 

Wten Franklin, the fugitive apprentice boy, in 1723, 
walked up Market Street on the morning of his first arrival 
in Philadelphia, munching the rolls in which he had in- 
vested a portion of the last dollar he had in the world, the 
curious spectacle he presented did not escape the attention 
of Miss Read, a comely girl of eighteen years who chanced 
to be standing in the door of lier father's house when he 
passed. Not long after, accident gave him an introduction 
to her ; they fell in love, and, soon after his return from 
his trip to England, he married her. By her he had two 
children, a son who died young, whom Franklin spoke of 
as the finest child he ever saw, and a daughter, Sally, who 
married Eichard Bache, of Yorkshire, England. Mrs Bache 
had eight children, from whom are descended all that are 
now known to inherit any of the blood of Benjamin 
Franklin. Before his marriage Franklin had a son whom 
he named William, who acted as his secretary during his 
first official residence in England, and who, as a compliment 
to the father, was made governor of the province of New 
Jersey. When the rebellion broke out, William adhered to 
the mother country, which exposed him to serious indig- 
nities and was a source of profound mortification to his 
father. Next to the loss ©f his only legitimate son, this 
was perhaps the greatest sorrow of Franklin's life. 

" You conceived, you say," wi'ote Franklin to liim nine j^ears 
after the rupture, "that your duty to your king and regard for 
your country required this. I ought not to blame j'ou for differing 
in sentiments with me on public aflairs. We are men all subject to 
errors. Our opinions are not in our own power. They are formed 
and governed much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as 
they are in-esistible. Your situation was such that few would have 
censured your remaining neuter, though there are natural duties 
which precede political ones, and cannot be extinguished by them. " 

Without presuming to extenuate anything that was 
unfilial in Governor Franklin's conduct, we cannot help 
remarking that Franklin, with a blindness common to 
parents, cpiite overlooked the fact that his son, when he 
determined to adhere to the sovereign whom he had 
sworn loyally to serve, was a lusty lad of forty-five 
years. 

In his will the father left William his lands in Nova 



28 FRANKLIN. 

Scotia, and forgave him the debts due to him. " The part 
he acted against me in the late war," continued the will, 
" which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving 
him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of." 
Governor Franklin had a son who also was not born in 
wedlock, named William Temple Franklin. He was brought 
up by his grandfather and served him in the capacity of 
private secretary during most of his residence in France, 
and after his return to the United States. Franklin tried 
repeatedly but unsuccessfully to have the young man 
appointed to some subordinate mission. He had been 
brought up in France, his education was strangely deficient, 
and he does not seem to have left an altogether favourable 
impression upon his countrymen abroad or at home after 
his return. It would not be strange if they judged him 
more correctly than his grandfather did. To this grandson 
Franklin bequeathed most of his books and all his manu- 
scripts and papers, from which he published the first 
edition of the writings of his grandfather, purporting to 
be complete, in 1816, and after a delay never satisfactorily 
explained and ap[)arently inexcusable. A criticism of this 
publication, attributed to Jefi"rey, appeared in the Edin- 
burgh Revieiv, No. 56, August 1817. 

Though spending more than half of his life in the public 
service, Franklin was never for a moment dependent upon 
the Government for his livelihood. With the aid of his 
newspaper, his frugality, and his foresight, he was enabled 
to command every comfort and luxury he desired through 
his long life, and to leave to his descendants a fortune 
neither too large nor too small for his fame, and valued 
at the time of his death at about ,£30,000 sterling. 
Though rendering to his country as a diplomatist and 
statesman, and to the world as a philosopher, incalculable 
services, he never sought nor received from either of 
these sources any pecuniaiy advantage. Wherever he lived 
he was the inevitable centre of a system of influences 
always important and constantly enlarging ; and dying, he 
perpetuated it by an autobiography which to this day not 
only remains one of the most widely read and readable 
books in our language, but has had the distinction of en- 



FRANKLIN. 29 

riching the literature of nearly every other. No man has 
ever lived whose life has been more universally studied by 
his countrymen or is more familiar to them. 

Though his pen seemed never idle, the longest production 
attributed to his pen was his autobiography, of less than 300 
8vo pages, and yet, whatever subject occupied his pen, he 
never left the impression of incompleteness. He was never 
tedious, and an inexhaustible humour, a classic simplicity, an 
exquisite grace, and uniform good sense and taste informed 
and gave permanent interest to everything he wrote. 
Franklin was not an orator, but when he spoke, as he did 
occasionally in the several deliberative bodies of which he 
was a member, his word, though brief, was, like his writ- 
ings, always clear, judicious, felicitous, and potential. No 
man ever possessed in a greater degree the gift of putting 
an argument into an anecdote. 

His country owes much to him for his service in various 
public capacities ; the world owes much to the fruits of his 
pen ; but his greatest contribution to the welfare of mankind, 
probably, was what he did by his example and life to 
dignify manual labour. WhQe Diderot was teaching the 
dignity of labour in France and the folly of social standards 
that proscribed it, Franklin was illustrating it in America, 
and proving by his own most conclusive example that 

" Honour and fame from no condition rise." 

There are few born into this world so ill-conditioned that 
they cannot find comfort and encouragement from some 
portion of the life of Franklin ; none of any station who 
may not meditate on it with advantage. That feature of it 
which is most valuable will probably be found most difficult 
to imitate. It is stated by himself in the following extract 
from his diary in 1784 : — 

" Tuesday 27th. — Lord Fitzmaurice called to see me, his father 
having requested that I should give him such instructive hints as 
might be useful to him. I occasionally mentioned the old story of 
Demosthenes's answer to one who demanded what was the first 
point of oratory ? ^rf/o« ; the second ? Action; the thinll Action, — 
which I said had been generally understood to mean the action of 
an orator with his hands in speaking, but that I thought another kind 
of ' action ' of more importance to an orator who would persuade 



30 FRANKLIN. 

people to follow his advice, viz., — such a course of action in the 
conduct of life as would impress them with an opinion of his 
integrity as well as of his understanding ; that this opinion once 
established, all the difficulties, delays, and opjjositions usually 
occasioned by doubts and suspicions were prevented ; and such a 
man, though a very imperfect speaker, would almost always carry 
his points against the most flourishing orator who had not the 
character of sincerity. To express my sense of the importance of a 
good private character in public aflairs more strongly, I said the 
advantage of having it, and the disadvantage of not having it, were 
so great that I even believe if George III. had had a bad private 
character and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned 
the former out of his kingdom." 

Though Franklin was far from being insensible to what 
are termed worldly considerations, his public life was 
singularly free from any vulgar or degrading trace of self- 
seeking ; he never is found making the public interests 
secondary to his own ; though holding office a good portion 
of his life, he never treated office holding as a profession, 
nor the public treasury as the accumulations of the many 
for the good of a few. His private affairs and the public 
business were never allowed to become entangled or to 
depend the one upon the other. Though, from the nature of 
his various employments, a target for every form of malevo- 
lence and detraction during the last half of his life, his 
word was never impeached, nor his good faith and fairness, 
even to his enemies, successfully questioned. Of some 
irregularities in his youth he early repented, and for the 
benefit of mankind made a public confession, and all the 
reparation that was possible. 

The most complete edition of Franklin's works is that of Jared 
Sparks, in 10 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1836-40. An edition of the auto- 
Vjiography, revised by John Bigelow, from original MSS., appeared 
in 1868, and again in 1875, 3 vols. Parton's Life and Times 
of Benjamin Franklin, 2 vols., was published at New York in 
1864. 







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